Twitch Partners with Gameloft for First Ever Mobile Streaming Experience

We’ve got an exciting new first today as Gameloft’s Asphalt 8: Airborne for iOS will be the first ever mobile game to feature Twitch’s live broadcasting functionality. The game will debut its broadcasting capabilities during the week of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) with a 24-hour live stream event on Twitch.

Beyond broadcasting gameplay to the player’s Twitch channel, Asphalt 8: Airborne’s Twitch integration unlocks the door to a host of interactive functions. These include the ability to stream your voice and image using your iOS device’s microphone and front-facing camera, and to monitor chat from people viewing your stream. Players can also archive their streams and share them over social media or discover streams from other Asphalt 8 players from within the app.

The Asphalt 8 integration comes on the heels of our recently released and very well received Twitch app for iOS v3.0. Asphalt 8 embeds a portion of the Twitch viewing app right into the game’s experience.

To showcase this mobile gaming innovation, Gameloft will host a 24-hour live stream event on March 17, 2014 on their Twitch channel: http://www.twitch.tv/gameloft. The broadcast will begin at 10:00 AM PDT and will feature a walk-through of all the streaming options, interviews with the development team, and a Q&A session with Twitch viewers.

Twitch functionality is currently optimized for iPhone 5S, iPad Air, and iPad Mini with Retina Display, and will be live as part of Update #3. This update includes brand new events and cars, as well as a new area and user interface, all of which will be available in the App Store soon.

Broadcasting your gameplay from a PlayStation 4 to Twitch only takes a couple of clicks, so it’s no surprise that...

Luca “e x R'” Jebautzke

No Android, okay bye

LarZen

It shouldn’t be a surprise anymore that iOS is what developers prioritize?

Richard Stanway

Android has 80% market share, so it is surprising that new apps target iOS first these days.

http://rmpaul.com/ Robert Paul

Yeah, now break down that 80% (which I’m pretty sure is a bit generous) into various Android versions and builds and hardware specs (many of which are crap).

I love my Android devices but let’s be realistic … for something this hardware intensive, targeting iPhone/iPad is much more straightforward and makes for a better return on effort/impact.

Arthur Cornwell

I think this would make sense on android as well, with most phones having newer hardware for this function. The biggest being android can outplay iOS by a long shot with its nvidia devices. Anything tegra 3, or higher, can out game an ios device. We all thought this not possible but nvidia has already made a Kepler GPU which begins on android devices said to literally match modern console quality games. It begins with a quad core android version and later a version for full windows tablets. Tegra 4 is already pretty good but this will dump on t4. Lastly even without tegra many mid to high end androids run over 2ghz quad. My nexus 5 being 2.23ghz and a new galaxy s5 and cyanogen oneplus one 2.5ghz quad and 4gigs of ram.. This is getting to laptop specs.. Crazy were things go when you let so many companies compete and so many of them are allowed your os. Next update is supposed to add desktop quality to Android

LarZen

Android have a big market share because there are X number of phones with a Android operating system. iOS stood for the highest mobile web traffic in 2013. And iOS is the platform with the highest app revenue.

So there is no surprise that developers develop for iOS.

http://ossareh.posterous.com/ Michael Ossareh

A huge portion of that android market share is effectively feature phones in markets which have nearly zero app revenue. Tim Cook was recently on record saying something to the effect of: I love android, it is a gateway drug to wanting a “real” smart phone: the iOS platform”. [1]

I’m linux through and though, I owned early android devices, unfortunately it is just not competitive in some ways – notably build quality – also a OS that crashes as frequently as android is just unacceptable.

Own both Ipad and nvidia shield (running android) as well as a galaxy s3. My ipad gets the least amount of use, offers the least customization, and when I get app intensive crashes (apps not the os itself) the most.

I believe iOS is a gateway drug to real smart devices running android, anyone with more than average PC experience or knowledge knows open source is ALWAYS the way to go, hands down.

iOS gets the bump because of its ease of use and appeal to the ignorant masses, the mindless heard brings cash to spend, same reason consoles get the bumb over PC gaming despite PC gaming being better in quality and easier to program for.

I see an update for android soon, if not by twitch then by some dev with the time to do it themselves and make an app that runs nativetly in android and can broadcast all games on twitch (already one in beta actually) thus is the power of open source OS (yeah I’m a linux man myself)

droid315

Saying that about an old operating system…I could say the same about early iOS due to it being buggy and slow. More apps are being developed for both platforms now. My HTC One (M7) has better specs than the iPhone 5S and 5C. I’m not on a OnePlus One with a 2.5 GHz processor and 3 GB of RAM. 5.5″ 1080p screen with a 401 PPI. That’s 3 times the RAM of an iPhone and note that Apple never says how fast their processors are. They just go “shiny new A7 oooo ahhhh Apple we cost a lot it MEANS we rock”. My phone runs perfectly fine on all games. In fact with a MOGA Power Pro controller and Modern Combat 4 I feel like I’m playing on a handheld gaming system. Android doesn’t crash anymore. Hasn’t since Jellybean. If Twitch were able to work on Android OS 3.0 and later we would be in business. That covers a HUGE number of devices WITH THE SAME SPECS AS CURRENT GEN IPHONES.

http://ossareh.posterous.com/ Michael Ossareh

Hi Droid315,

Thanks for your response. You do bring up some interesting counter points, however I think they’re predicated on conflating two points. Let me try to be more clear:

Re the point about Android market share. I intended to convey that building software for Android is an important part of our overall device strategy, but this strategy is not informed by global Android market share. Instead it is informed by the market share of Android users that are in our target demographic. As you rightly point out that demographic has access to astonishingly capable phones. I believe our Android 3.0 release demonstrates our commitment to that as it really harnesses what these phones are capable of.

While talking about Androids market share, it is imperative to keep in mind that much of the share is in feature phones. That is devices that are optimized for long battery life and as a result are not used by our demographic (who want faster CPUs, bigger screens, better network, etc).

Tl;dr; “Android has 80% market share, so it is surprising that new apps target iOS first these days.” – a lot of that 80% is not on valuable devices.

Re my comments around stability. In the time since I first responded I’ve upgraded to iOS 7. I now believe that iOS and Android are closer in stability than with prior releases of iOS. That means, a step back for iOS coupled with a step forward in general android hardware specs and OS stability. As time goes on I think we’re going to see an increase in focus from both camps to make their systems better; this feels very similar to the PC clock speed race: everyone is trying to go faster, but at some point you end up taxing the power supply too much, and so you focus on efficacy. Except in this case we’re going to be focused on finding the local maximum of battery longevity, OS responsiveness, and overall system stability. Mobile, particularly smart phone, is still in its infancy (even though it feels like they’ve been around forever!) in terms of hardware and software – phones 5 years from now will be completely different beasts.

http://about.me/yannispatras Yannis

Pareto principle, aka 80-20 law. 80% of the market that only makes them 20% of their revenue; not very alluring if you ask me. I’m sure others will use the same argument.

Robert Siegrist

That’s not how that law works.

http://about.me/yannispatras Yannis

Due to the nature of the Android marketplace, you know it could be even lower than 20%… If that’s what you mean, yeah.

Robert Siegrist

While I agree and it sucks. The reason Iphone is prioritized is because it’s simple. It’s much better (if you are trying to make money) to try and get out software for hardware that doesn’t have much differentiation between models than it is trying to make software that will work with not only different manufacturer’s, but also different hardware, sizes, capabilities, etc. like the Android has. I remember this explained really well by a dev at blizzard in regards to Hearthstone. They hit up the iOS first because there were less variations to adjust for.

BIG-DADDY-WOLF

answered my question real fast

LarZen

This is really cool.

GamerLCD

Instead of making new features and programs for every device and they always have to cater to iOS first eve though it gets less market share every day.

redbowl

The problem is that Android’s large marketshare is mostly low end hardware. That trend isn’t changing either. High end devices like the GS4 are still a small niche compared to both iOS and Android as a whole, which is why games and other apps are either on iOS first or are exclusive.

I’m sure that a port to Android will eventually follow.

Arthur Cornwell

And i’m sure they will be reaching out more in the future, with android L trying to open up Android even more. They are 1: aiming for phones to have more storage for larger games. This brings us to 2, more optimization to games, as it is vastly growing towards console quality 3d game. 3 Android L is going both x86 (32 bit, supporting up to 3GB of RAM), and x64 (64 bit, supporting up to 128GB RAM). the best processor for android currently is a 2.5ghz Quad core, with a 2.7ghz quad core in development. Its obvious that Android now has to build to a desktop/laptop quality OS. It could also be running for no longer need google play to get your apps, as you can already currently can download new app projects via your browser. If iOS does not stop capitalizing on just its os thinking its little 1.3ghz dual core, which most low end androids already have, Android is going dominate iOS in functionality, making it a dinosaur. Already, a full Windows 8.1 tablet is running the same stuff your average laptop and desktop is running. So if comparing tablets, Windows already wins in this aspect, both in business, with all the Microsoft office amenities, and games, with twitch already a go on pc. I guess if you get a streaming device you can probably stream way better quality to twitch since manny androids have either video out through the micro usm port or mini hdmi. Just need an hdmi streaming device and your good. Most likely will not effect your normal performance either anyway since your not using your hardware. Just wait, I’m sure it will work for Android to.

redbowl

Clock speed, cores, and performance are all separate things. I thought we learned that with the benchmarks between AMD and Intel Pentium 4/Athlon wars ten years ago.

Here are CPU and GPU benchmarks of an iPhone 5S against much newer GS5 hardware that is clocked higher with more cores.

Android is a less efficient operating system than iOS or Windows Phone. Google is in the process of correcting this by transitioning from the Dalvik interpreter to ART. This is while iOS adds another native language, more frameworks, and the Metal API which further reduces OpenGL overhead.

Android requires much more processing power to achieve the performance of something with half the clockspeed. Why else would a $100 WP device be smoother than a $600 Android flagship? Its like the difference between running a Java applet and a native app on your desktop. Interpreters add a lot of overhead.

Most important of all, revenue from Android needs to be much higher. Developers go where the money is. Despite being on 5x as much hardware, Android draws developers half the revenue that they make on iOS. This also applies to microtransactions and advertising. Even Google makes more money from iOS than their own Android. Rule of thumb is that for every dollar an iOS user is worth, an Android user is worth a quarter.

You’ll see Android given higher priority when it is more profitable, which I think will happen when its high end hardware sales move out of the niche that its currently in. Until then you will see continued late ports of existing iOS apps or apps that are missing.

Arthur Cornwell

Yes but look at the nexus 5 with the Dev build of Android L from about 2 months ago. Its bench has nearly doubled. That’s just the buggy unfinished Dev build. Its because Androids current software is still not in sync with the hardware architecture. iPhone has already successfully done that already. Mainly because its hardware is no where near as diverse as Android, its older hardware because they have more time to get a better hardware sync. However, Google is vastly learning the array of hardware. New hardware made a large change in architecture and android had that curve. So far they have been making that curve smoothly with Android L. Also note that on that list some of those phones are close to the benchmarks and half the price of the compared device. If Android L contenues its pattern there will be $160 phones benching like an iPhone 6 when running L. Phones with the same, or similar hardware architecture.

Via Windows phone is probably a no go, since it is doing so poorly app revenue. Windows phone/Windows RT currently only holds an 8% market share on mobile phones. Windows 8.1 tablets can already do this though. Its done the same way as a windows 8.1 desktop or laptop, because its the same os, assuming you have a windows 8.1 tablet that can handle it though. Only one i can think of off the top of my head is the Razer edge/Razer Edge Pro. Though some can do it with lower tier games easily. So basically games with the quality of a newer Android or ipad. Maybe slightly better.

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